I was one of the many that ventured out on November 7th arriving at the local polling location at 7:03 a.m. figuring I would beat the crowd of people that surely wouldn't be there that early in the morning. That was my first mistake. There were about 200 people ahead of me, the line doubling back through the lobby of the church bringing back memories of many conquered Colorado passes.
Once in line and after assessing the situation, I figured I shouldn't be there more than an hour and called to let my boss know when I would be in. That was my second mistake. I was, like most of you, stuck in line for over three hours.
Both of these things, I can deal with to perform my civic duty.
What I can't deal with, is the report I heard on the radio while driving into work today. They said there was an "issue with the software". I can tell you right now, at the location that I was at and from what I have ascertained from others, it was not the software; it was the process -meaning there was human error.
I do have some ground to stand on when I state that the software at the voting booths was more than adequate. My career is in Information Technology (IT) as a project manager working on software development. The beginnings of my career also include software quality assurance. I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly in software and the booth software gets a green light.
What I witnessed at the polling location was that there was one person with one computer logged into the main database through the internet that could verify one voter at a time to give them their access code. To top it off, that one person hen pecked at the keyboard.
The entire three hours I stood in line, half of the booths were empty. Not because they were not working, but because that singular person could not keep up. Just think about how hard it would be to force the same amount of water coming out of a fire hose, through a garden hose. It just doesn't work.
Don't get me wrong, I will be the first to stand up and make the statement that the volunteers at my location were wonderful. But there were not enough of them or to be more specific, the computers needed to verify voters.
The only question should be - who made the decision to put one verification computer for fifteen booths? Logically, please attempt to explain that.
Things will not improve unless it is acknowledged that with computers, there are also process and procedures. Process and procedures are developed and supported by people.
The people failed miserably in this case and should be held responsible. Stop using a "software issue" as your scapegoat.